1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the systems, the devices and methods for preventing a device user from forgetting and losing important personal items as the user moves between different locations. More particularly, this invention is related to a reminder device implemented with a trigger for triggering an audio output for pronunciation of a designated reminder message upon a specific reminder-required activity.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The problem of forgetting important personal items when a person moves from one location to another becomes very annoying. It is desirable to provide a device to remind a person to check important personal items such as wallet, cellular phone, coat, eye glasses, airline ticket, passport, etc., before leaving for next destination such that forgetting and losing important personal items may be prevented.
Many patents and patent applications have disclosed reminder devices. However, such devices are generally related to reminding a person to carry out certain activities such as take medications, at particular time of the day. The device for providing reminder messages at designated times is however not practically useful for reminding a person to check and prevent the loss of important personal items due to the fact that the activities are usually taking place at different times of the day. A reminder message that is provided at fixed time according to a predefined schedule generally will not satisfy the requirement of timely providing a requirement message when such reminder messages are necessary and required because a pending event or activities is soon to take place.
In Published US Application 20070129888, a spatially associated personal reminder system is disclosed. The device enables users to create reminders and associate those reminders with entering/exiting particular trigger areas. A user's portable computing device triggers an alert/displays a reminder based upon a user entering and/or exiting a trigger area. A user interface supported by the portable computing device allows a user to terminate the reminder so it will not trigger again, to defer the reminder so it triggers again after an elapsed time, to reset the reminder so that it triggers again only if a user leaves the area and then returns, to request a last chance, causing the portable computing device to remind the user again upon exiting the area to ensure the user did not forget to act upon the reminder, or to edit the reminder. The user interface also enables users to graphically define trigger areas within the physical world to be associated with personal digital reminders using geo-spatial imagery.
However, such system and method is still limited in the practically usefulness due to the facts that the reminder messages are related to particular locations. A person often travels to very different kinds of places that have different geo-spatial imagery. The triggering of a digital reminder depending on locations and the characteristics that are spatially associated will not effectively resolve the problems faced by a typical device user.
Therefore a need still exists to provide new and improve system to resolve the difficulties and limitations discussed above.